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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

100 Hairstyles in a Lifetime

Hoda & Kathy said that a woman goes through 100 hairstyles in her lifetime. That's at least what I read because I was watching them with closed-captioned while on the treadmill and surprised to see them in the morning. I had gotten so used to them at 2 a.m., I forgot that the daylight behind them wasn't a studio trick. But now, having to wake up at pre-dawn to get ready to send the foursome off to school, I'm back to watching the real-daylight, closed-captioned, version. Okay, back to the hairstyle thing.

100 hairstyles. That's a lot isn't it? What exactly defines a "hairstyle"? A ponytail one day and a french braid the next and a messy bun the next don't count, right? Because if every time you do your hair different counts, I think my 7-year old might be pretty close to her lifetime limit. I think a definite, obvious cut or color or almost-permanent curling or straightening would be required to count as a hairstyle. In which case, I am woefully below my lifetime limit. I think I've only had my hair cut, more than a couple inches for a healthy trim, maybe half a dozen times. And coloring? Once in college when I did it myself against the warning of my room-mate. Yeah, frizzy, light brown/dark orange really wasn't such a good look. Almost as bad as growing out light brown/dark orange with black roots. And now, I'm pretty much going with the not quite straight, not quite curly, better off tied up look.

And do you count the times you tried to cut your own hair? My second daughter would have a couple checked off on that list; she thought scissors were a good, quick way to demonstrate her dislike for a particular ponytail and her desire for bangs.

Does this also count the myriad experiments that moms go through trying to figure out what to do with their daughters' hair? Over the past couple weeks, I've been with a couple different groups of mothers and each time, the conversation has wandered into the "what do you do with her hair?" realm.

What grade of hair does the girl have? How long is it? Does she play sports? Does she like barrettes? Is her hair "natural" or have some kind of processed treatment or whatever there is in between? How old is she? What products have you tried? What worked? What didn't work? Braids, twists, blow-dryer, flat-iron, curlers? Shampoo and condition? Shampoo only? Condition only?

On and on. Try it. Put about 3 or 4 moms of girls together, give them a few minutes, and watch the conversation turn towards hair.

Half of our hair product inventory: just for one day.

Why? Because, aside from the desire for healthy hair, we moms are judged by what our children look like! True? True. You know when you see a child with crazy looking hair, you don't shake your head and think "what has that child done to her hair?" No, instead you think "what the heck is wrong with her mother letting that child come out of the house like that?" Thus, our daughter's hair goes on the list of things to stress about.

So, those 100 hairstyles? We probably go through half of those before we are old enough to wrestle our heads from our mothers and start our own experiments. We run through a bunch more trying out whatever's the "in" style of that time. And then we leave a few for when our daughters are still interested enough to play in our hair and style it with 55 barrettes (probably one of the best looks I've had in quite awhile).